Ted Leonsis still wants to buy MLB, MLS teams for D.C. sports empire

Since acquiring the NHL’s Washington Capitals in 1999, Ted Leonsis has built out a sports empire in Washington, D.C.

Through Monumental Sports & Entertainment, founded by the former AOL senior executive, that empire now includes the Capitals, the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, as well as the Capital One Arena and Monumental Sports Network, which airs all the teams’ games in the region. All told, MSE is valued at more than $7.84 billion, according to CNBC’s Most Valuable Sports Empires 2025, ranking 19th.

However, unlike many other sports conglomerates, Leonsis and MSE have stayed focused on Washington, D.C.

Part of that logic, Leonsis explained to CNBC’s Mike Ozanian at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference earlier this week, is the leverage and efficiency that comes with an organization operated like “a tech company or a branded platform company,” with each team being managed independently but sharing resources like sponsorship, ticket sales and a media network.

“Coca-Cola has 100 brands, but one truck that delivers all the brands,” he said.

Building out that platform and benefiting as more teams are plugged into it has meant Leonsis and MSE have stayed acquisitive.

“I’m unabashed; I want to buy the MLS team. I want to buy the baseball team,” Leonsis said. “Not for ego, [but] for the fans, because those teams will struggle to compete against the Yankees and the Dodgers but if we can take those teams and plug them into the platform, and they can operate with excellence as a team and we handle all the top line, I think it will make them more competitive and that’s what fans are looking for.”

But, to date, the efforts to acquire a team in those leagues haven’t been successful.  

Leonsis had reportedly been in discussions with Caryle Group co-founder David Rubenstein on a potential joint bid to purchase the Baltimore Orioles for several years, according to the Washington Post. However, that agreement never came together and Rubenstein and an investor group acquired the Orioles in 2024 for approximately $1.725 billion.

The Lerner family, owners of the Washington Nationals, announced that they intended to explore a sale of the team in 2022. According to the Washington Post, Leonsis offered at least $2 billion to buy the team, but the Lerner family announced in 2024 that it was no longer considering a sale.

“We talk all the time,” Leonsis said of the Lerners. “It takes two to tango, and they’re not ready to sell; they want to wait to see what happens with baseball.”

While MLS’s D.C. United has brought on several minority investors in recent years, valuing it at upwards of $800 million, there is no indication that the team is for sale. The team was previously acquired by an investor group from AEG for roughly $26 million in 2005.

Leonsis acknowledged the challenges of acquiring teams in an era of skyrocketing valuations, regardless of sport. He also said he’s looking at other opportunities within sports, such as lacrosse and women’s hockey, as well as ways to work with non-MSE-owned teams in the area, such as the NWSL’s Washington Spirit.

“I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a team today,” he said. “You’re talking about billions of dollars in debt; that debt used to be earmarked for operations, now it’s being earmarked for entry to buy the team.”

A future acquisition could be aided by outside investors. In 2023, Leonsis sold a 5% stake in Monumental to the Qatar Investment Authority, a deal that valued the organization at around $4 billion at that time. It also broke new ground for the investment of sovereign wealth funds into U.S. sports, which followed moves by professional sports leagues to allow private equity firms and funds to purchase team stakes.

Leonsis has previously said that QIA is treated as investors, not partners, and it is a passive investment.

His belief in the platform model being built at MSE is only growing as the company invests more into it, and he said it is operating more like a SaaS business than perhaps outsiders realize. Leonsis said the company has upwards of $750 million in revenue yearly, a number he expects to reach $1 billion in the next three years.

“We sell subscriptions, season tickets, and suites; we’re a growth company, but 70% of that business is contracted long term,” he said. “We look like Oracle, Salesforce.”

Could the desire to grow that model eventually mean buying teams outside of the D.C. metro area?

Leonsis recalled a trip he took to London in 2019 when the Wizards played the New York Knicks in the city. While in London, he met with several investment bankers who took him to see a variety of soccer teams, including Chelsea. At an NBA board of governors meeting not long after, Leonsis said just a few of the NBA owners were not bidding on Chelsea in some capacity.

“When I came home, I thought that we can’t do this,” he said. “This is so inauthentic. I didn’t play soccer, I’m not going to live in this neighborhood, I’m not going to be able to add value and our platform can’t help.”

But that doesn’t mean every move Leonsis has made in the Washington, D.C.-area has been well received. MSE met plenty of criticism in 2023 after a previously announced plan to relocate the Capitals and Wizards to a $2 billion complex in Virginia fell through. MSE and the city of Washington, D.C., later struck a deal to renovate the existing facility.

“I’m just going to stay in my 10 million household area,” he said.